About Us.
Welcome to our website!
Our Community Pub
The Lamarsh Lion is a wonderful country pub on the Essex /Suffolk border and has been an Inn for over 700 years. Closed briefly in 2016, we re-opened after refurbishment in June 2018 as a Community Pub.
Lamarsh and neighbouring Alphamstone are two tiny, ancient villages on the Essex / Suffolk border each with a population of around 200 people. We lie in the deeply rural and stunningly beautiful Stour Valley.
John Constable and Tomas Gainsborough painted in Lamarsh and are reputed to have frequented the Lamarsh Lion. Copies of Constable’s Lamarsh House and Gainsborough’s Lamarsh Cliff – Landscape towards Cornard now hang in the bar. It is believed that Lamarsh, almost unknown to the outside world, is the only village in which both of these world-renowned artists painted hence the nickname “The Painters’ Pub”.
Book to dine with us today!
Book a table to join us in our fantastic pub for food and drink today,
Committee Members
All committee members are unpaid volunteers from Lamarsh and Alphamstone, most have busy day jobs and the committee is extremely lucky to have such willing committee members.
Russell Haldane
Chairman
Lamarsh resident since 2017. Solicitor and founder partner of leading East Anglian ‘Top Tier’ Firm (Legal 500) and practicing law internationally. Father of three young children, dedicated ‘Blood Biker’and Charity fund raiser. Committed to improving, promoting, and ensuring the long term sustainability of our community asset, The Lamarsh Lion.
Ruth Allison
Treasurer
Ian Gibbs
Vice Chairman
Served as an Army Officer 1976 – 1989 after which he joined a company of tea brokers in London and set up his own company in 2005. Ian has been a Parish Councillor in Bures, organised a major international weekend in Bures involving over 100 visitors from six countries and organises local participants in biennial twinning events.
Katherine Holder
Company Secretary
Has lived in Lamarsh since 2015. Now retired, but worked in London, Colchester and Bahrain in law and insurance . Trusted of Daws Hall, an Education Centre and Nature Reserve in Lamarsh. Loves walking 9and sometimes jogging) around Lamarsh and the surrounding area. Keen to support the Lion and to ensure it remains a comminity asset.
Penny Marsden
A pianist with qualifications from all four London music colleges and in her spare time a keen cook. She taught as professor at the Guildhall School of Music for over 25 years. After settling in Lamarsh in 1992, she was invited to join the teaching staff at the Colchester Sixth Form College, from which she has recently retired. However, her links with the area go back to her teens. She has organised and been involved in many charity fundraising events in the village and cares greatly for the future of the Lion.
Sara Erith
Lamarsh resident for fifty years. Church supporter and many-times organiser of the excellent Lamarsh fete.
James Erith
Born and brought up in the village, James spent ten years managing a large garden centre business in Teesside before returning to the area with an online store. Currently James is a novelist with nine books out and his latest, set in the area, will be released in 2021.
